I'll buy you a beer: Firewire Audio Interface Unstable as HELL.

Posted 27 March 2012 - 07:37 PM

denmarkdavis

InsanelyMac Protégé

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5 posts

My new system is running great - until I use my RME Fireface 800 (through MB firewire 400 input). It's totally temperamental, often needing 4-5 restarts after kernal panics before it behaves. After these hiccups, it does run stable.

Is this a firewire problem? Any help would be really useful, it's driving me insane.

I know from several real-life situations that the first thing to try if you're having Firewire problems is another cable.

Is the Fireface bus powered or does it use an external power supply?

Do you have any other Firewire devices you can hook up to and test it with?

Run Console.app and look for kernel.log. Try to track down messages from when you had your last crash caused by the firewire interface. If you find anything, post it here.

I have only used the Firewire on my Hackintosh twice, I believe it passed with flying colors - once I attached a PowerBook G4, booted it in target mode and installed 10.4.11 on it, another time I used it for copying a ton of files to a friend's MacBook Pro. No hiccups. I used an Apple Firewire cable. I've never tried any audio devices though. The Firewire chip is from LSI, no idea what model it is. Just to let you know that it is possible.

I know from several real-life situations that the first thing to try if you're having Firewire problems is another cable

Tried new cable - no difference

Is the Fireface bus powered or does it use an external power supply?

External

Do you have any other Firewire devices you can hook up to and test it with?

All other firewire peripherals work fine.

It is when audio is passed through firewire, it either makes the mouse jitter which leads to a kernal panic, or the audio locks and repeats the last 10ms until a kernal panic or restarts. There are no firewire specific entries in the console.. :/

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Posted 26 June 2012 - 05:18 PM

GhaleonX

InsanelyMac Protégé

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49 posts

I work with a RME Fireface 800, too
When we first got it we had some issues with it, but after updating the RME to the latest firmware, everything was good to go after reloading our configuration settings. If you have not already updated your RME's firmware, I'd suggest doing that FIRST.

That being said, if you already have the current firmware, and if all your other firewire devices work flawlessly, I'd suggest trying the RME on another computer and seeing if you run into problems. The problem you describe, however, suggests to me that you may have some DSDT fixing to do. FWIW, I've seen many audio problems (even with other external interfaces like mbox2) that will not go away until you have a proper enough DSDT to have proper IRQ routing (main problem area is HPET).

In fact, I've seen many people who end up getting a real Mac for audio production because of problems with their hackintosh. You should only use a hackintosh for professional work if it's very thorough, and of course, very vanilla.